


This Moment Belongs to Us

by colourinside



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, New Year's Eve, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 00:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9211952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colourinside/pseuds/colourinside
Summary: Rose and the Doctor join a New Year’s celebration. At the stroke of midnight, Rose finds herself questioning the meaning of time and change.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year everyone! I’m really sorry for the delay but I hope you’ll still enjoy my little New Year's contribution :)

She watched as the newborn fire feasted on the dry branches. It exhaled a joyful crackling and sizzling, spat blazing sparks at the crowd as it consumed its New Year’s meal. Her face burned and blushed while she gazed at the flames that towered over her, high as a building, and the heat they radiated reached through the fabric of her clothes to her very skin. Her front was all hot while the stinging December cold sat at her back. But the bonfire had cast a spell on her and she was unable to take her teary eyes off the dancing flames, the wisps of smoke that spiralled towards the starless sky. The stars had covered themselves from view, hid behind a blanket of heavy clouds, but the bonfire shone and blazed in their stead whilst emitting orange sparks – stars of its own. It was the night of its life.

The small crowd chatted and laughed. All they did was consciously wait for the time to pass. They stood on the brink of a new year, the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. It was a gathering of young people, all looking forward to new chances, new challenges, new adventures – the making of new promises, the discovering of new talents, the thrill of new kisses, the excitement of new friendships. But for planet Earth it was just another round of a perpetual course.

They were anonymous in the crowd. Rose had taken the Doctor’s hand, squeezing it with a bright smile.

“This is amazing,” she said. “It’s like a big wall of fire, I mean _really_ big… I’ve never seen anything like it…”

He returned her smile but she picked up on the only faintly belittling look in his eyes. It was as if he meant to say he knew better – bigger, brighter, higher, more impressive, more magnificent, more awe-inspiring. He kept it to himself.

“Yeah, it’s kind of brilliant, isn’t it?” he said instead, as if he meant it. It made her laugh.

But it was. She could see why he would take her here. Of all places on Earth he could have picked to join a New Year’s celebration, this was clearly the most magical one Rose could imagine. Breathtaking even. They were at the top of a hill, the city of Reykjavík at their feet. The roofs of the buildings were topped by a thick coat of snow, the electric lights drew a trail of gold and copper through the streets and on the opposite side of the patch of city there stood a firm, mighty range of snow speckled mountains, keeping watch, touching the misty clouds above.

For the first time since they had arrived, Rose took a moment to glance at the people around them. The couple to her right barely took notice of her and was obviously hoping to be overlooked in the bustle of the last fleeting minutes of the past year. Two young men, both wearing hats. They were huddled together even though there would clearly be enough space for them to stand apart, their gloved fingers tightly entwined. The three people in the row in front of them – two girls with pig tails and a young man – were fervently singing a folk song. Rose was just about to look to her left, when a tall bloke in a long, olive green felt coat addressed the Doctor.

“Just six more minutes to 1953,” he said with a childlike grin, looking at a worn pocket watch. “Are you excited?” Next to him stood a woman. She was wearing a crimson bonnet, short blond curls bobbing up and down as she turned her head to peek at the man’s watch.

“Well, I don’t know,” the Doctor said. “It’s just time passing as time tends to do… But I suppose it can be exciting, feeling time so closely, watching it fly…”

“Absolutely,” the man said, “I also love watching the fireworks! When I was a lad I was terrified of them but now I find them quite entrancing.”

“They certainly are,” the Doctor agreed.

“Pardon,” said the man, seized by a sudden intuition. The innocent excitement in his face gave way to an apologetic smile that was clearly meant to soothe the grim glare he received from the young woman at his side. She had pinched his elbow and now shook her head at him in exasperated disapproval.     

“Allow me to introduce myself,” he added and extended a hand to the Doctor, gripping firmly as he accepted.

With an uneasy stutter, he recited their names as if he had memorised this very introduction phrase like one would memorise one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. His name was Lars and the young woman was his wife, Adele. Lars appeared to be heady, like a child, a little awkward, enthusiastic as if he was preparing for the biggest adventure of his live and didn’t want to miss a minute. Evidently, his wife Adele was the one in charge, a governess, a caretaker, reprimanding him whenever he showed himself too impulsive.

After they had completed their round of handshaking, Lars checked his watch again. His hands had kept twitching towards it as if he was aching to see, his big bulging eyes followed the time ticking by, rather controlling it than checking it. “Only four more minutes,” he declared with a start in his voice.

Adele put a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder. “He is truly obsessed with measuring time,” she said, barely able to keep herself from fondly rolling her eyes. It was as if his odd behaviour embarrassed her. So, she explained him in order to make people understand him.

“Three more minutes,” Lars exclaimed, “the last three minutes of 1952!” He clutched his chest in devotion.

Rose felt herself holding her breath even though she didn’t entirely understand why. This moment was her past, a place where time should not have any power over her. Those last three minutes to a year long gone should not move her as much as they did. Wherever she went, time held an unspoken significance. It guided, it rushed, it dragged but it never passed at the right pace. It was impossible to freeze moments and keep them in a snow globe because they would fade into the past. Time was not tangible. One could never catch it with a string and keep it still, it would always run, run, run – run away. Like a gargling brook. Time was a sovereign that shaped the way people understood the universe. It created things that mattered, marked ends and beginnings.

“Did you make any resolutions?” Adele asked, holding up the conversation while her husband was preoccupied with following the passing of the seconds.

“Oh,” the Doctor said, looking at the sky. Occasionally, there were a few lonely bursts of colour sprinkling the air, heralds of the anticipated spectacle.

“I have some all-time resolutions. They never really change…” He turned his head, facing Rose. “What about you, hm?” he asked.

“Well…” Rose said. She hadn’t made up her mind yet. However, she could think of one permanent resolution and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips at the thought. She squeezed the Doctor’s hand once more. “I suppose not… I think I will just go wherever the new year takes me…”

She used to put together a list of New Year’s resolutions. Find a more exciting job, be a support to mum, stop wanting to live other people’s lives, read Charles Dickens, drink less… A new year used to mark a new try, a new chance to do the right things. But the tradition of specifying resolutions had lost meaning once Rose had left behind the mundane temporal order of her former existence.

“Here we go!” Lars interrupted her thoughts. The fireworks had started. “Happy New Year!”

The crowd ended their conversations as they broke into murmurs of _oooh,_ _aaaah_ and variations of _Happy New Year_ at the sight of the colours exploding above the city. Flakes of red and green, of blue and gold rained down on the roofs, the bursting and cracking sounds they made even drowned out the hissing and sizzling of the big bonfire. Rose didn’t know where to look first. There were pillars of smoke and colour rising everywhere, and as they grew they filled the air with patterns of grey mist and gaudy sparks. The Doctor laughed out loud with joy.

“This is fantastic!” he shouted through the noise.

“It’s a new year… 1953… right here and now…” Rose said, quietly. “I can’t believe it…” Suddenly, time stopped making sense to her.

“Why not?” the Doctor asked, “It’s right in front of you… a new beginning!”

Only it wasn’t. This was an old year but she experienced it being new. She was frozen in a today with people who would have a different line of tomorrows. She came from a different present and she felt like an intruder.

“It’s strange…” she whispered. “There are new years all the time…. We could have gone to any place, any year… And now, we just stand in this day as if it was our own, but it isn’t, it belongs to those people... This is not our new year, not our 1953.”

Instead of the fireworks, Rose looked at the people. The friends, the lovers, the husbands and wives, the mothers, the fathers, the children, the brothers and sisters. Just minutes ago, they thought they could grip the future and now the future had caught up with them, at the stroke of midnight, the tick of a clock. This was the moment where the past met the future, where the ending touched the beginning to create an infinite loop. And this was just another day, taking its place, passing.

The Doctor remained silent. Rose could see the thoughtful furrow of his brow as he watched the sky, the colours of the fireworks tinting the edges of his face.

“And while all that happens, we are just spectators,” Rose mumbled, more to herself than to the Doctor. “We will never fully understand…

“How do you do that, Doctor?” She studied his stoic face. He never saw the seasons change, never saw a whole year pass in its consistency. He could enter the years at will and now he had just walked into a new one in a blink of an eye and it had happened without his conscious doing.

“I enjoy the little things, the bits and pieces…” he said merrily, after a while. He smiled down at her and moved closer. “Happy New Year.” Rose could hear the endless line of “new”s in his voice. She returned his smile.

All around them, couples greeted the new year with a kiss. To their left, Lars clumsily kissed Adele. To their right, the two young men used their hats to shield themselves from scrutiny as they brought their lips together in a quick peck.   

Rose’s eyes met the Doctor’s. The blazing bonfire and the colours of the fireworks reflected in the comforting darkness within them. He slowly put one hand on her cheek that felt hot beneath his touch, despite the biting cold around them. And then, he kissed her. Gently, sweetly, briefly. The kiss held a thousand unspoken resolutions. And even if 1953 didn’t belong to them, this moment of it did.


End file.
